


The Aftermath of Companionship

by jmtorres



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-16
Updated: 2007-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 18:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Martha gossip about the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aftermath of Companionship

"Look," said Martha one evening, cradling the phone against her ear, "you talk a big game, Captain, but tell me the truth--have you ever slept with him?"

Jack's laughter crackled down the line, and Martha had a bite of ice cream, waiting for him to answer. It was such a stereotypical thing to do, curl up on the couch with a carton of Ben &amp; Jerry's and cry to one's girlfriends about old boyfriends, but Martha thought she could use a bit of boring normal in her life at the moment.

"This chapter of my autobiography," Jack told her, "is entitled 'My life as a TARDIS rentboy.'"

"What?" Martha asked, wishing she could get a look at his face. That sounded like a yes, but with Jack...

"So I was basically hitching, when I first start travelling with the Doctor and Rose," Jack said. "They'd rescued me from a ship that was about to explode, I was appropriately grateful--"

"And you offered them your body in your gratitude?" Martha said, snickering despite herself.

"Well, I didn't think of it in _those_ terms," Jack said. "Mostly I just thought the Doctor was an interesting guy who I wouldn't mind hooking up with, so I kissed him. Now, I want you to know that I'm not bragging when I say I'm a good kisser--"

"Aren't you _just_," Martha laughed, though she wasn't sure which she meant--bragging, or a good kisser. Jack had caught her up in an effusive thank-you on the Valiant, and it had been quite nice.

"--and I think I flustered him," Jack said over her laughter, "because the first thing he said was, 'No, no, no, you're meant to be for _Rose_.' This came as some surprise to me, I hadn't known I was supposed to be _for_ anybody, but apparently the Doctor had invited me along to, how can I put this, provide for Rose's needs."

"Oh, no," said Martha. Then, "Wait a mo, you mean he wasn't--?" All that hullaballoo about the irreplaceable Rose, and she hadn't been the Doctor's lover?

"Nope," said Jack. "From what I got out of him, she'd made overtures, but he felt he couldn't possibly, and he'd been trying to come up with someone Rose would accept as a substitute. He'd invited her boyfriend along--Mickey, I met him once--and Mickey said no. Then they'd picked up some guy named Adam from 2012 who the Doctor thought Rose seemed to like. And Adam, on his first trip out, managed to get a hole in his head."

"He died?" Martha asked, startled--she'd thought the Doctor took better care of companions than that, or at the least that Jack would be less blasé about it.

"Biotech hole in the head," Jack answered. "It was kind of a fad for about a century, a couple hundred millennia from now--neural data processing. The guy was trying to download enough data into his brain to take home and profit from, which the Doctor disapproved of, so he dumped him. And then there was me."

"And did you?" Martha asked. She lowered her voice to add teasingly, "Provide for her needs?"

"Not then," Jack said, "which was a tough decision for me, because she was gorgeous and friendly and didn't know the Doctor had been trying to find her a boytoy--but I was too miffed to just go do what the Doctor wanted. I mean, not that I _haven't_ paid my way in trade before, but it's insulting to have someone just _assume._"

"Sure," said Martha, rolling her eyes at Jack's offhand comment on his own prostitution. "If they make it clear upfront, it's one thing, but--"

"Exactly!" Jack said. Martha couldn't help laughing--she'd been sarcastic, and Jack was taking it straight. "What?"

"Nothing--go on--what _did_ you do, then?" Martha asked.

"Declared war on the Doctor, of course," Jack said. "At that point, I felt morally bound to seduce him."

"Morally!" Martha said. Her ice cream was half-melted in her lap and she'd practically forgotten she had it. Jack was good for distraction.

"I got Rose in on the act, too," Jack said. "I'm not opposed to sharing, the more, the merrier, I say, so I queered up my act to be her gay boyfriend--I knew fag-hag relationships were common enough by Rose's time--and convinced her that we should act on our mutual lust for the Doctor. The funny thing was, the Doctor got pissed about our friendship before he realized we were hitting on him all the time--he felt if anyone should be Rose's gay boyfriend, it should have been him."

"Is he gay?" Martha asked. "Is that it? I mean, I sort of wondered, with the Master--"

"Nah," Jack said. "Any sufficiently advanced society will tell you that the default setting for sexual preference is 'Yes, please' and everything else is just cultural wiring. The Doctor's wiring at the time--still, I think--was this guilt and grief about his people. I think he thought he could never feel joy again, or maybe didn't deserve to, and surely couldn't bring joy to anyone he loved, so he shouldn't get involved with anyone. That was why he'd been trying to find someone else to make Rose happy, and there I was, shoving me _and_ her at him, ruining all his matchmaking and not letting him sit in the corner feeling sorry for himself."

"Did you--succeed?" Martha asked. She realized that even though she'd started out morbidly curious, even though her original question had practically been _am I the only one he won't look at_, she was now rooting for Jack, and maybe even for Rose. She _hoped_ they'd gotten their reluctant Doctor into bed.

"Yeah--once," Jack sighed. "Things kind of went to hell in a handbasket not long after that and I didn't see him again until, you know, last year--" Last year, a few days ago, a hundred trillion years from now--time travel made things complicated. "I don't know how Rose fared without me instigating things."

"I think they must have stayed close," Martha said.

"They were _close_ when I met them and they weren't screwing," said Jack. He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his tone was gentler. "Do you feel better, now that you know what a Herculean effort it took for even I, Captain Jack Harkness, to seduce him?"

"You mean, that you had to have _help_?" Martha bantered back. More seriously, she said, "I feel less sorry for myself, but I think I feel sorry for _him_. When's he going to get it through his head that he does have people who love him, and that he doesn't have to be alone?"

"I don't know," Jack answered softly. "I think the Master probably set him back a ways on that. Even aside from--you know--"

"Yeah," Martha agreed.

"He'll go back to his lonely Time Lord act," Jack said, "his hearts beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. Clearly what we need here is another targeted campaign. Tell you what, you call him up, tell him to meet you in Cardiff, and I'll stock up on whipped cream and vibrating buttplugs, and we'll ambush him."

"Yeah, that'll knock some sense into him," Martha said, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, anytime you wanna try it, you let me know," Jack said. "I'm always up for it."

"I bet," said Martha.

"I'm here for you, too, even if you don't want to get the Doctor involved," Jack offered gallantly.

"Why, Jack, I think that's almost sweet," Martha said. "I don't quite know that I'm desperate enough to take you up on it--"

"Ah, curses!" Jack said. "Foiled again!"

"--considering I _am_ still hung up on the Doctor," Martha said, not allowing Jack to make her laugh. "And so are you. It wouldn't really be fair to either of us."

"Oh, Martha," said Jack. "The heart is capable of holding more than one love in it, and you're special in your own right."

Martha's breath caught, and she was very glad Jack was miles away in Cardiff and not there with her in person, or she might have kissed him, then. "You _are_ a smooth talker, aren't you," she said, trying to make a joke of it. She popped a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, quite suddenly wanting the comfort again.

"And you're as bad as he is," said Jack.

"I've got to go," Martha said, flattered and discomfited all at once. "Work in the morning, you know."

"Okay," Jack said kindly. "You'll call again?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course I will," Martha assured him. "Tomorrow, all right?"

"Hey," he said. "Never forget--you saved the world."

"I'm hanging up before you get mushy," Martha said, though what she really meant was, _before I start to cry,_ because what _he_ meant was, _never forget how special you are._

"Good night," Jack laughed.

"Good night," said Martha.

She hung up the phone and put the ice cream away and standing there in the kitchen, hugging her housecoat close against the chill of the freezer, she thought, _I'm Martha Jones. I saved the world._

Who knew what tomorrow would bring.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is also archived on dreamwidth: http://jmtorres.dreamwidth.org/1057685.html


End file.
